Helping Hands for Haiti Gives Update this Friday

Rosedanie Cadet has returns to Orcas to update relief and sustainability efforts in Haiti. She will give a talk at Emmanuel Episcopal Parish Hall on Friday, Sept. 21

Rosedanie Cadet, Director of Helping Hands Noramise, an agency set up following the disastrous 2010 hurricane in Haiti, will give an update on the project this Friday, Sept. 21 from 6 to 7 p.m. at the Episcopal Parish Hall in Eastsound.

Rosedanie will be returning to Haiti on Oct. 9, after about six weeks back on Orcas Island. A slide show will run during her update, in which she will announce a shift in the agency’s focus to youth and education.

To that end, Helping Hands Noramise is partnering with the 4-H program. Orcas youth in the 4-H Club have held fund-raising dinners at the Senior Center, and those proceeds will go towards their partner organization in Haiti. The Haitian club will follow all 4-H protocols for collecting funds. They will start with purchasing goats to raise.

Cadet says that she is intent on education rather than industrial production, in part because the adults are dispirited. “They are so used to failure; it’s in their mindset that’ it’s not going to work. We are trying to educate the younger ones to utilize the resources they have to create prosperity, working with people rather than with things,” she said.

In addition to the 4-H partnership, Cadet has also become associated with Sustainable Organic Integrated Livelihood or SOIL. That organization has been producing compostable toilets in Haiti since 2006. “They are phasing out of fabrication and plan to hire workers and marketers,” she says.

Several 4-H Club members will also speak of their involvement at the event. All are welcome to attend, and for further information, contact www.noramise.org or call Rosedanie at 360-420-1331